Superior Court Judge Pro Tempore Timothy H. Bellas yesterday ordered former governor Juan N. Babauta to pay his former wife, Diana Chong, $800 a month. <\/p>\n
Bellas issued the order after hearing Chong\u2019s motion for an order in aid of judgment to collect from Babauta a court judgment of about $80,000 in spousal support, child support payments, and others.<\/p>\n
Babauta appeared in court with his counsel, Stephen Nutting. Chong appeared with her counsel, Michael Dotts.<\/p>\n
Babauta at first agreed to talk to reporters after the hearing but, after talking with his counsel for several minutes, he later told the media he will not comment as negotiations are still ongoing between him and Chong.<\/p>\n
Dotts told Saipan Tribune that Bellas\u2019 interim order directed Babauta to pay $800 a month and that $500 of that is for spousal support. The remaining $300 a month will be applied to court judgment in the total amount of $80,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe $300 a month that applies to the judgment won\u2019t even cover the interest. However, he\u2019s got no income right now, presently he\u2019s unemployed,\u201d the lawyer said, referring to the former governor.<\/p>\n
Dotts said they\u2019re disappointed with the amount. \u201cEight hundred dollars is really small,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The lawyer said they are, however, pleased to finally have a judge since filing the motion in January. \u201cIt took us this long to get a judge because the judges all found reasons to recuse themselves,\u201d Dotts said.<\/p>\n
Now that they have a judge, he said they have a little bit of money each month and they can proceed with selling some of Babauta\u2019s property to get the whole amount paid.<\/p>\n
Dotts said if they can\u2019t work on something else for the full payment of what Babauta owes, they will be looking at filing a writ of execution.<\/p>\n
With the writ of execution, they will try to have the court sell some of Babauta\u2019s property \u201cbecause he does have a lot of property,\u201d Dotts said.<\/p>\n
Babauta and Chong reportedly separated in 2002. They have a son who is now 22 years old. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Superior Court Judge Pro Tempore Timothy H. Bellas yesterday ordered former governor Juan N. Babauta…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-184528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}